September 2, 2018

Help Prevent Submission Headaches- Proposal Format Reminders

Incorrect formatting can prevent proposal submission to Grants.gov and other sponsor systems.

Thankfully, these errors are relatively easy to fix if you know what to look for.

For example, some versions of Word, auto-correct quotation marks from 鈥渟traight鈥 to 鈥渃urly鈥. If these curly quotes are routed in an application to Grants.gov, an error results which prevents submission until corrected.

We highly recommend all proposal preparers to prevent this from occurring.

That鈥檚 not the only potential formatting headache.

We recommend even seasoned proposal preparers review sponsor guidance like:

Grants.gov:

NIH:

 

NSF:

  • Research.gov –

11/24/2025 – links updated